Page 38 of To Carve A Wolf

He still is.

I opened my eyes and looked back down. Just in time to see them ride in. Wolves.

Covered in snow and blood and cold. Andros at the front. His horse moved like it sensed its master’s fury—quiet, restrained, but ready to strike. His cloak whipped behind him like a banner, boots dark with blood, eyes darker still. His men followed close, Garrick among them, all worn from the hunt but alive.

They dismounted in the yard. A few pups stopped swinging their swords. Andros said something. I couldn’t hear the words. But I saw him crouch, eye-level with Dain, say something that made the boy nod eagerly, a grin stretching across his face.

Andros reached out—touched his shoulder. And that sight… That one gesture…Lit a fuse beneath my skin. I gripped the edge of the window ledge so hard my knuckles ached.

He had no right. No right to be near him. No right to look at him like that. To speak to him. To touch him.

And I didn’t care how many titles Andros wore. Alpha. Conqueror. Blood-soaked warlord. He would never take that from me.

When Andros turned his head, saying something low to Garrick, I caught it—the flick of the Beta’s gaze toward the citadel. Toward me.

They couldn’t hear the way my heart thundered in my chest, couldn’t feel the tension pulsing in every inch of me like a scream held just behind my teeth. But I knew they felt something. Wolves always did.

I didn’t step back from the window. I didn’t blink. I simply stood there, arms crossed, cold air pressing against the glass, watching Dain laugh with the other pups like nothing in the world had shifted. Like he hadn’t just been brushed by something venomous. I stayed frozen—stone and silence—asminutes passed, every second coiling tighter inside my lungs.

Then came the knock. Firm. Precise. Without apology. I didn’t speak. Didn’t move. The door creaked open anyway.

Garrick stepped inside as if the room were his, as if he’d been here a hundred times before and would be again. His eyes moved over me—still barefoot, my hair an unbrushed mess, rage painted across my face like warpaint—and I didn’t bother to hide the storm churning inside me.

“Oh, what now?” I snapped, voice brittle, sharp. “Here to serenade me with another heroic tale about your precious Alpha?”

He didn’t bite. Didn’t smile.

He just closed the door behind him with a soft, deliberate click and said, calm and devoid of theatrics, “Andros wants dinner with you.”

“You’re joking.”

“His chambers. Tonight. Just the two of you.”

The laugh that tore out of me was jagged and humorless, cutting through the tension like broken glass. “And if I say no?”

Garrick’s face didn’t change, but the cold in his voice wrapped around the room like a noose. “Then I carry you there in chains. Those were his exact words. I may like you, Lexa, but don’t mistake me for the type who’ll hesitate.”

He didn’t linger. Didn’t wait to see if I’d hurl something at his back. He turned, walked out, and the door closed behind him with a soft click—final, echoing. I stood in the center of the room, staring at nothing, my hands clenched into fists at my sides.

Fury curling like smoke under my skin. Then it changed. The smoke didn’t fade, it thickened, it became pressure. Heat. Tension. I straightened, instinct prickling down my spine like static. My breath hitched. My body tightened in places I didn’t expect—jaw, fingers, stomach—and something inside me tilted, shifted, like a coin flipping in the dark.

No.

A strange, crawling sensation swept across my skin. Weak and powerful. Hollow and sharp. My heartbeat stuttered, then pounded harder, like it was trying to force something back. My head swam—not dizzy, not sick.Awake.And then the first lash of pain struck.

Sharp. High. Intimate.It wasn’t like the dull ache of a worn rune. This was new. This was a wire pulled taut and snapping straight through bone.My knees buckled, and I caught myself against the wall with a hiss.

Another.A second rune on the verge of cracking. Breaking. Its power unraveling like smoke pulled from a dying fire.

“No…”

My voice was breathless, strangled. Not here. Not now.I wasn’t ready. I needed more time. I pressed my palm to my spine, as if I could hold the magic there through sheer will—but it was gone. The strength that rune offered, the silence, the armor of nothingness that kept her caged—slipping away, thread by cursed thread.

I could feel her now. Faint. Weak. Defeated—but there.The wolf.

Buried for thirteen years, carved into silence by dark magic and blood, and yet… she stirred. Just a twitch in the back of my soul. A shadow unfurling its claws.

No.I needed the runes. I needed the silence. I needed that goddamned armor before the wolf inside me dragged me back to the thing I swore I’d never be again.

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